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Happilie I have arrived at the last

Unto the wished haven of my blisse.

Although Mr. Langworthy had not named a time for their conversation, Sarah had hoped he could come later that evening to the George, for not only would he and Harry be taking their leave aboard the Gazelle in the next day or two, but the Iffley party had no more excuse to linger, and Sarah was anxious to return to Bash.

He did not come, however.

Nor did he send word the next morning at breakfast.

Indeed, if Sarah had not told the baron of Langworthy’s request, she would have been hard put to invent reasons for waiting.

As it was, they walked out to see the dockyards and the garrison chapel after breakfast, certain they would return to find him in the inn’s coffee room, but he was not.

There were navy men aplenty, all very fine in their uniforms, but no Mr. Langworthy.

“Are you certain he is not expecting us to call again at his uncle’s home or again at Miss Pence’s?” asked Lord Dere when he caught her glancing at the clock again.

“He said nothing of it,” Sarah replied anxiously.

“Should we send a note?” suggested Frances. “He might have forgotten.”

If he had forgotten, Sarah balked at reminding him. He had asked to speak with her, so why should she be the one to give chase?

But there was still her mother-in-law’s message to deliver, even if he would never come to Iffley again. And, truth be told, the thought of being robbed of this last time gave her a miserable little pang.

“Very well,” she murmured. “I will beg pen and paper and send a note.”

“You had better tell him Mama’s invitation, while you’re at it, in case he was already called away and cannot come to us,” Frances said, reading her disappointment.

“And in the meantime I will go up to our room and pack the presents we bought in our bags.” Rising, she gave Sarah’s shoulder a consoling press.

Patting back a yawn, the baron excused himself as well. “If you don’t mind, dear Sarah, I will take a little nap after the morning’s exercise. But if he comes, you need only send someone to knock on my door, and I will come down at once.”

Even if Sarah had not been fretting over the wording of her note, she might not have noticed Langworthy when he entered the coffee room a quarter hour later.

Not because she had ceased to glance up in hope whenever the door opened, but because he entered in a bustle of seamen dressed as he was, in uniform.

He had always been a fine, upright, good-looking young man, but in his beautiful dark blue lieutenant’s coat with its white lapels he was magnificent. The more so because he spied her right away and came straight to stop beside her table.

Startled, Sarah looked up…and up. “Mr. Langworthy!”

His color rose, but he made her a bow, his black bicorn hat tucked beneath his arm.

“Pardon me for not coming sooner—or sending word. I came as soon as I could,” he said, flustered.

“I had only returned to my uncle’s five minutes yesterday, before Stolles—the Gazelle’s surgeon—arrived in Nobbs Lane to hunt me up and carry me off.

The crew is complete. That is—I’m ashore on duty now to see to last-minute things, but I’ve only just got away and haven’t long before I must be back.

The boat’s to be off for Spithead by four—”

“Then let us waste no time,” Sarah broke in, her own face hot as her heart thumped. “Won’t you sit down?”

He shook his head. “Not here. If—you wouldn’t object, they have smaller, more private parlors.”

She did not object. Folding up the note she would no longer need, she followed him from the coffee room.

Langworthy received a respectable share of nods from fellow officers, including one or two boasting gold buttons and epaulettes, and curious glances traced his companion’s progress as well.

Sarah was looking her best, if only because her cheeks were crimson and her blue eyes dark with apprehension.

The hum of voices quietened when he shut the door behind them, and then they were alone. She didn’t know whether to sit or stand. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She didn’t know where to look.

He was scarcely better off.

It must have been the smallest parlor at the George, containing only a round table and two armchairs before a modest fire. Beneath a painting of the Battle of Quiberon Bay, a clock ticked loudly on the mantel.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Where—where are the baron and Miss Barstow?”

“Upstairs.” It emerged as a squeak, and she hastily turned to march over to the farther armchair, trying quietly to clear her throat.

“They are upstairs. I was just writing to you to say we would be returning to Iffley tomorrow and that—and that we would be sorry to miss you. Frances thought maybe you forgot.” She folded her hands in her lap.

“No—how could I, when I was the one who asked to meet?” Finding that he was gripping his hat too tightly, he laid it on the table. “It is as I explained. I did not forget. Indeed, I’ve thought of little else since I last saw you.”

“Oh.”

Another pause. Just when Sarah wondered if he remained standing for fear of creasing his handsome uniform, he took the other chair, his gaze dropping to her hands.

She remembered him taking them in his own when he left Iffley and, afraid he would read her mind, had to resist the urge to sit upon them.

“What must you think of me, Mrs. Sebastian.”

“You must tell me what to think,” she said gently. “We—understand now that it was Miss Pence and—er—Blodgett—who posed as servants at Perryfield, and I would guess it was not at your suggestion.”

A mirthless chuckle was her answer.

She wished she could ask if they were engaged again, but it proved impossible.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

With a whirring of gears, the hour struck.

Giving himself a shake, he grimaced and ran a hand through his hair.

“I have thought and thought what I should say, but it has all floated away. Therefore I must blunder ahead, though I may regret my words the moment you are gone. Mrs. Sebastian—Mary Pence did not come to Iffley with my knowledge. You had asked me to forgive her for jilting me, and I had, and congratulated myself for it. But when I discovered her at the children’s ball, I found how cheap my forgiveness was. ”

“Cheap?” repeated Sarah. “Do you mean because you realized you had not forgiven her after all?”

His mouth worked a moment. “No. Because I realized I had not so much forgiven her as forgotten her. If I had found it easy to forgive her for breaking our engagement, it was only because she had lost her place in my heart. Utterly. She had been…superseded.”

He raised eyes then so black, so bottomless that Sarah felt herself sucked in, whole, body and soul, like a ship spiraling down, down in a whirlpool.

“Sarah.”

She clung to the arms of her chair as if they were the only things preventing her from falling into him. (They were.) How she longed to give way! To let herself plummet, praying he would catch her.

Had she been five years younger—had the last several years of her life not taught her about loss and grief—had she had only herself to answer for—Sarah might here have abandoned restraint as rashly as ever Mary Pence had.

But no.

She was who she was, and who her life had made her.

And so she did not move.

There was nothing she could do, however, about what her eyes might express, without recourse to words or motion. And what he read there was enough.

“When she and I left the ball,” he went on, his low, rumbling voice sending tremors through her, “we did not return to the rectory, as you know. I took her directly toward Oxford, intending to send her straight back here. She and Colley had ended their own engagement, and Mary then thought it would be good fun to see what delayed me in Iffley. She was not…well pleased with what she found. Put simply, she saw enough to make her throw chocolate on you and to say whatever she might have said to you when you were alone.”

Even the memory of Mary Pence’s dreadful accusations that night made Sarah ill. She could not repeat them now. Could not. Especially when Mr. Langworthy, for all his blazing eyes, had not yet said where he stood with the young lady, nor why they had kissed, if they had kissed.

She shook her head. “I would—I would rather not—that is—I”

“That good, you say?” His faint grin made her heart turn a flip-flap like a tumbler at the fair.

“Mr. Langworthy,” she whispered, unable to wait any longer, “are you and Miss Pence engaged again?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Sarah. Aren’t you going to ask me what Harker saw?”

She swallowed. “I have already been told by every busybody in Iffley what Harker saw.”

“A good point, Mrs. Sebastian. An important distinction. I misspoke. I should have said, do you not want to ask me what precisely went on between Miss Pence and me, that Harker witnessed?” Reaching two fingertips, he took a fold of her skirt between them and gave the smallest tug.

“I—only if you want to tell me, sir.”

“‘Sir’!” he protested teasingly. “Sir me no sirs. I do, in fact, want to tell you, Mrs. Sebastian, and for the first time I am at liberty to do so.”

“Are you?” she whispered.

“Indeed. Not only because Mary’s Iffley escapade is no longer a secret with you, but also because, following your call in Highbury Street, she and I spoke heart to heart and settled two things.

” Leaning closer, he gave her skirt another twitch.

“Perhaps you should come nearer, so I might murmur the rest in your ear. You never know who might be about in places like this.”

“We had better chance it,” she managed to reply. But she did not jerk her dress from his fingers.

He sighed. “Very well. But if you should change your mind, you need only say so. Where was I? Oh, yes. Miss Pence and I spoke heart to heart, and our first determination was that we were not, had not been for several months, and never again would be engaged to be married.”

“Oh.”